"... On Thursday Obama ramped up the theatrics and gave us a preview of his New Year strategy for diverting attention away from his manifest failures. He stepped to the microphones to prove he identifies with the struggles of the helpless against those cruel Republican Scrooges (transcript). His tone dripping with pious solicitude, he began:

Weve been doing everything we can to make sure that 160 million working Americans arent hit with a Holiday tax increase on January First If youre a family making about $50,000 a year this is a tax cut that amounts to about a thousand dollars a year. Thats about forty bucks out of every paycheck.

So far the Presidents math is correct, since most employees are paid either bi-weekly or semi-monthly.

It may be that there are some folks in the House who refuse to vote for this compromise because they dont think forty bucks is a lot of money. But anyone who knows what its like to stretch a budget knows that at the end of the week or the end of the month forty dollars can make all the difference in the world

So on Tuesday we asked folks to tell us what it would be like to lose forty bucks every week.

Wait a minute! Every week? He just changed it from $40 out of every paycheck to $40 every week! But the temporary tax cut is worth only $19 every week to his hypothetical $50,000 per year family.

Youd have to earn $104,000 a year for Obamas Social Security tax markdown to be worth $40 every week.

Obama then quoted some of the emails from his folks about how they would deal with the loss of $40 per week.

Joseph from New Jersey would have to sacrifice the occasional pizza night with his daughters. My 16 year old twins will be out of the house soon  Ill miss this.

Richard from Rhode Island wrote to tell us that having an extra $40 in his check buys enough heating oil to keep his family warm for three nights. In his words, and Im quoting, If someone doesnt think that 12 gallons of heating oil is important invite them to spend three nights in an unheated home.

Pete from Wisconsin told us about driving more than 200 miles each week to keep his father in law company in a nursing home. $40 out of his paycheck would mean that he could only make three trips instead of four.

Dinner out for child whos home for Christmas, a pair of shoes  these are the things that are at stake for millions of Americans. They matter a lot.

Obviously these emails are absurd. If you earn $104,000 and have to give up $40 per week, are you really going to have to deny your kids a pizza or a pair of shoes? Will you shiver for three nights without heating oil?

Of course, there are some folks to whom $40 every week would be make a real difference:

A hotel maid who works full time for $8.50 per hour

A construction worker who has been cut back to half time work at $17 per hour

A self employed business owner whose customers were hammered by the recession and now barely survives by depleting his savings. He generated only $17,700 profit this year after paying his employees and the employers half of the payroll tax which was not reduced by the Obama payroll tax markdown.

To each of these people Obamas temporary payroll tax cut is worth not $40 but $6.80 per week.

But much of the media have already begun to help Obama plant a false perception in the minds of uninformed voters that Republicans would deny everyone $40 per week. (For example, see the headline here.)

Obama knows that informed voters will figure out the deception. But he doesnt care about informed voters. They wont vote for him anyway."

This deficit in the revenue from FICA collections has to be made up somewhere. And it will come out of the general tax revenue collection funds, make no mistake about it. Willingly or otherwise, American citizens have agreed to being more heavily taxed than ever they have been in the past, and it will NOT be limited to only “the rich”. The most pernicious tax of all is the general inflation all of us will soon feel, as the purchasing power of the few remaining dollars we have left is steadily reduced, sometimes in large increments, as the low-interest availabilty of ready cash spreads further and further in our economy. Or even cash grants, essentially a subsidy for the falling value of the dollar, further exacerbating the already declining value of whatever medium of exchange that is accepted by the denizens of the now failing state.

When a loaf of bread hits $150, and artificially subsidized goods become ever more scarce, the full impact of this Soviet-style command economy will begin to affect even the most fervent socialists. As a similar situation came to affect the citizens of the former Soviet Union, they turned to an underground economy, in which exchanges of labor for goods and services became the medium of exchange. Primitive, but this in turn forces some serious decisions on the governing class - do they prosecute the black market, or do they reform the economic system?

Thanks! I usually get smarty answers when I say that, like “Hah! Now that the market’s down, you 401k is screwed!”

In fact, it’s stronger than ever right now. When a coworker says something like that to me, I advise them to check their own 401k, and most are surprised. The news media has been telling them for years their 401k accounts were wiped out by Bush cronies, and they’re too afraid to even look at their accounts.

13
posted on 12/25/2011 8:18:12 PM PST
by Cyber Liberty
("If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." --Winston Churchill)

Prosecuting the black market is often next to impossible if you don’t know the method of how the market works. You have to figure that one out first. At some point reforms are going to have to be made and painful decisions made and personal accountability taken on the shoulders of someone respected enough to be listened to. Then of course, the population needs to stop this self destructive spiral and change a lot of a attitudes and long held viewpoints.

16
posted on 12/25/2011 8:29:27 PM PST
by Niuhuru
(The Internet is the digital AIDS; adapting and successfully destroying the MSM host.)

Everybody is missing the true motivation behind this push for the reduction. Since 47% of people no longer pay income tax, the next best way to remove them further from the tax rolls and ensure a permanent Democrat ruling class is to move towards a means tested Social Security contribution and eventually a similarly twisted Medicare Tax. At some point you’ll hear that the “rich” should be covering the share of these deductions for the currently untaxed. Not only will the 53% be paying for the percentage of Americans that are permanently attached to the National Nipple, but they’ll also be covering all of the benefit costs of the rest of the untaxed.

17
posted on 12/25/2011 8:30:50 PM PST
by festusbanjo
(Planning my escape regardless of which party is in charge.)

Cant even buy a muffler for $40! Damn sure can’t fill up my truck with it. It would take at least 3 of those $40. It’s all gimmicks, put the $40 back in Social Security. By dollars paid, the U.S. Social Security program is the largest government program in the world and the single greatest expenditure in the federal budget. At present the limit is $106,800 (it rises to $110,100 in 2012). But if the cap is lifted and it includes all taxable income, it will be able to tackle the problem of increasing benefits, from an increase of revenues. A benefit of lifting the cap on the taxable income, but not increasing the benefits make some suggest that the revenue from high income earners will lead to solvency of social security.

20 bucks a week actually does make a difference. My weekly budget includes only 120 bucks of pocket money. What comes out of that pocket money is weekly groceries for myself, non-grocery store meals, and entertainment, and a little bit of miscellaneous spending. Chop that by 20 bucks and my standard of living takes a noticeable hit.

The 0bama / Senate Democrat tax cut is only worth $160 total since it is only for two months. The House Republican tax cut would have been worth $1040 since it would have been for a full year. So, Harry (Reid) and Little Dickie (Durbin) raised our taxes by $880.

$20-$40 a week for teacher union dues. This figure was probably worked out to give teachers the money to pay their dues in states that no longer collect and pass through to the unions for direct contributions to Obama.

If this is true, then $40 a week means that I will end up paying $160 more in taxes each month. I make $635 every two weeks in take home. Me and my co workers will be very angry. You who gave me this tax will become an object of wrath. Even I might vote against the GOP over this.

That means the GOP.

I will be hurt, hurt terribly, by this $40 per week tax. Only a fool will raise taxes on my income group. The GOP is marching into a trap yet again.

AND the "cost offset" of this "magnificent ZERO'S $40 tax reduction to the American workers" will be recovered over TEN YEARS via the Freddie and Fannie fees. These are the clowns we have running the Gov in the District of Corruption. THROW EVERYONE OF THEM OUT on Nov 6.

Let's see ... I might buy a bottle of Laphroaig if I find myself north of the border in New Hampshire and happen to think of it. It's good whiskey, and it will taste all the better for having kept the revenue out of Coup Deval's grubby hands.

Does O. mean "$40/week for the rest of my life, or for the rest of my working life, or for the next five years, or for the next two months, or for the next two minutes? Because the absolute amount of money involved sure as heck is significant to me.

Are you saying that if you had the mythical $40 less than you do right now you would not be able to afford food? I don’t believe it. Obesity is one of the biggest health issues of poor folks in th US. On the other hand, if you make $100K and would miss $40 per week that much it is your own fault for spending the rest of it foolishly.

If you make $635 every two weeks in take home, then take your gross pay, multiply it by 2%, then divide that by two and that's how much you'll be getting per week (for two months anyways). You're looking at more like $6.35 to $7.00 per week, not $40. It's 2% of gross pay, not a flat $40 per week for everyone, that's the whole point.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.